Title page for ETD etd-04262012-142938

The Problem and Possibility of Animal Minds in Brandomís Work: Revisiting Heidegger, Rationality, and Normativity

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Department

Philosophy & Religious Studies

Advisory Committee

Advisor Name

Title

Cogburn, Jon

Committee Chair

Raffoul, Francois

Committee Member

Schufreider, Gregory

Committee Member

Sirridge, Mary

Committee Member

Keywords

Language

Explicit

Implicit

Inferences

Discourse

Teleology

Okrent

MacIntyre

Rationality

Minds

Animals

Brandom

Heidegger

Normativity

Date of Defense

2012-04-19

Availability

unrestricted

Abstract

Robert Brandom denies animals implicit reasoning by emphasizing their inability to make inferences explicit, and in so doing, denigrates animals by likening their behavior to that of machines and artifacts. I contest, however, that animals are paradigmatically more than any similarity or analogy to mechanical processing, just as humans are paradigmatically more than any reductive analogy to animals. The human/animal distinction need not come at the cost of ignoring the difference between animals and artifacts, and I believe we can largely subscribe to Brandomís differentiation of the human in terms of expressionism if we allow that animals can make implicit inferences without making them explicit.

After exposing in Chapter One Brandomís ghettoizing of animal minds, I show in the following chapters what it might look like for humans to perform explication on behalf of implicit animal inferences. In Chapter Two I show where Brandom departs from Heidegger, and how there would otherwise be a place for animals in his thought. After revising Brandom along more orthodox Heideggerian lines, I explore in Chapter Three the early Heideggerís concept of the world in terms of Dasein, animals, and unworlded things with an eye towards Brandomís inferentialism. In Chapter Four I employ Mark Okrentís teleological understanding of rationality to fill out Heideggerís suggested view of animals. I conclude the thesis by showing how humans make explicit the implicit inferences of animals.